Bruce Handy on Culture

I Watched Sarah Palin’s Channel So You Don’t Have To

John Boehner, who has said talk of impeaching President Obama is a “scam started by Democrats,” has obviously not plunked down his $9.95 a month to join the Sarah Palin Channel, a subscription-based Web site (“channel” is a bit of a misnomer) launched this week by the former half-term governor of Alaska. And sure, Boehner’s House of Representatives is a model of statesmanship and restraint when it comes to disagreeing with the White House, but on the S.P.C., it’s all “I word,” as the founder puts it, all the time. At least it seems that way to this early adopter, because yes, I sacrificed my credit-card info so that you don’t have to, in order to report on the Sarah Palin Channel’s “programming,” which is also available for an annual fee of $99.95.

Full disclosure: according to the terms of service, I get the first two weeks free, and can cancel my subscription anytime up to that point, free of charge; I’ll let you know how easy or not that is.

In the meantime, as Palin says in the welcoming video that pops up once you’ve taken a deep breath, tried to forget all those stories about shopping sprees on the Republican National Committee’s dime, and typed in that three-digit number on the back of your MasterCard: “Hey, thank you so for joining our channel. This really is our channel, yours and mine, where we share ideas and discuss the issues of the day, and find solutions together to restore all that is good and strong about America. . . . Together, we’ll go beyond the sound byites, and cut through the media’s politically correct filter.”

In other words, though you may not have realized it, we’ve been living in a world in which, despite her vice-presidential candidacy, her paid gigs on Fox News, her books, and her two TV series, Sarah Palin’s Alaska and Amazing America with Sarah Palin, Palin’s beliefs have not been fully and freely enough disseminated. No more: if you’ve been wondering what Palin thinks about environmental regulations or federal deficits or the importance of family—and you have your credit card handy—you are now very much in luck.

(Corollary: according to a video in which Palin shares with her views on the current Middle East crisis, we are also living in a world in which staunch defenders of Israel have no voice.)

What you are not paying for with your subscription are production values. Most of the videos appear to have been shot in Palin’s kitchen or on her porch; she speaks directly to the camera, sometimes with a few cutaways to stock photos. The low-res picture quality and boomy sound may remind you of a 1990s home video, though that could well be a deliberately folksy touch. There are many of those, including a video in which Palin shows off the contents of her freezer—ground moose meat—and another in which she wishes her parents a happy anniversary. In that one, Palin calls out to her husband, Todd, to ask him about a bumper sticker on her father’s car that may hold the key to her parents’ “53 years of married bliss.” “I don’t remember,” says Todd, off-screen, sounding annoyed, like a husband in a sitcom whose zany wife has hatched a scheme to make money by being on camera all the time.

Palin eventually remembers the bumper sticker herself. It goes like this: BALDING, BEER BELLY, NO TEETH—AND YET I STILL LOVE HER. I’ve seen better bumper stickers, but Palin’s point is that a sense of humor is essential to a long-lasting marriage. Hard to argue with that. In all sincerity, I was moved by a fly-on-the-wall-style video of Palin talking to her youngest son, Trig, feeding him lunch, and reading to him from Dr. Seuss’s One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. She has a gentle, easy, loving way with Trig, who has Down syndrome, and really, that’s all that needs to be said.

But back to politics, Palin’s ostensible calling. So far, it seems, what the Kardashians are to E!, impeachment is to the S.P.C.: a bottomless well of programming ideas. “You guys know my position,” she says in one video. “Drafting articles of impeachment is the only remedy the Constitution offers us to rein in the lawlessness.”

“If not this president, then no president is impeachable,” she says in another video, and then explains how this all might work:

“Gotta start talking about impeachment because drafting the articles of impeachment it—it involves evidence. And, uh, basically a trial, for the people’s representatives to be able to vote on whether or not they’re going to deem this president—that we send a message.”

I transcribed that civics lesson as scrupulously as I could, and I have to confess I went back and forth on whether the word “deem” might have actually been “ding.” Hard to tell. Either way, you get her drift—which is truly le mot juste.

Oh dear, did I just write something in French? Having now blown my cover and revealed myself as a coastal-elite, lamestream-media snob, I will also reveal that I’m a shill, or stooge, since Palin couldn’t exist as a political and media figure without people like me, and maybe you, to play off, to serve as lightning rods for her and her followers’ sense of righteous aggrievement. That’s where she gets her strength from; it’s her red earth of Tara . . . Tara . . . Tara . . .

In that regard, as Ian Crouch points out on newyorker.com, Obama is her ultimate foil, what with his Ivy League degrees, his slender, vaguely metrosexual airs, and his condescending habit of speaking in diagrammable sentences. Palin needs him the way the Harlem Globetrotters need the Washington Generals, except that Obama is the one who usually wins, which is his greatest service to Palin. Because imagine an alternate universe in which Palin wins. She herself did, which is why she’s no longer knocking around the Alaska statehouse, and why, it says here, she’ll never run for president. Crusades are more fun than governing, plus you can’t monetize the latter, not legally, anyway. There is a clock on the S.P.C. homepage counting down the days, hours, minutes, and even seconds to the end of the Obama administration, an allegedly blessed day. But I’m sure Palin, in her heart of hearts, is not just ready for Hillary, but eager.

P.S. To Palin’s credit, it turned out to be fairly easy to cancel my trial membership. At least I think it was. I’ll let you know for sure when I get my next MasterCard statement.

P.P.S. I discovered I still have posting privileges, so as an experiment to see how the S.P.C. handles dissenting views—or, to be honest, trolling—I posted the following comment:

I’m glad someone else is concerned about executive branch overreach. If only governor Palin had been on the scene in 1986 to lead the impeachment charge against “Rino” Reagan over his Iran-Contra crimes.